Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines Koji Haneda on Friday asked the Philippine government to consider the inputs of the Japanese companies operating in the Philippines to the proposed Trabaho bill.
“We have already expressed our views. I hope that in the course of deliberation it will be duly considered (by the Philippine government),” he said at at the sidelines of the 44th Philippine Business Conference held at the Manila Hotel.
The Japanese embassy in the Philippines, he noted, took the same position as that of the Japanese companies operating in the Philippines through the Japanese Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.
Japan Embassy Minister for Economic Affairs Makoto Iyori said the embassy was supportive of the position of the Japanese companies in the Philippines.
“We want to have a more comfortable environment for the companies in the Philippines here. We don’t want to unilaterally say this is the system. But we want the Philippine government to listen to the Japanese companies operating here,” he said.
Japanese chamber vice president Nobuo Fujii said Japanese companies were worried about the second tranche of the TRAIN Law, known as the Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-Quality Opportunities, or the Trabaho bill.
“Most of our manufacturing companies will not enjoy the privileges they were promised because of the threat of incentives being diluted in the Trabaho bill. “There is a shared consensus among Japanese companies not to pull out (from the Philippines) but they will not expand also,” he said.
Japanese companies, in a position paper submitted by the chamber to lawmakers, in March 2018, sought a longer transition period of 10 to 15 years for the full implementation of the bill.